


If You'd Been Listening

by Kastaka



Category: Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere
Genre: Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-25
Updated: 2006-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-14 23:32:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/pseuds/Kastaka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>With many thanks to Helen Browne (kateshortforbob) for their beta-ing and tireless commitment to correcting my spelling of 'pigeon'.</p>
    </blockquote>





	If You'd Been Listening

**Author's Note:**

  * For [corialis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/corialis/gifts).



> With many thanks to Helen Browne (kateshortforbob) for their beta-ing and tireless commitment to correcting my spelling of 'pigeon'.

 

 

_Dear diary: it's the evening and here we are sitting in the House Without Doors as if the whole embarrassing escape attempt never occurred. It's late and I'm tired and I've been trying to listen to Door's grandiose plans to reclaim Lord Portico's fiefdom, but I'm not doing very well and any moment now she'll ask me if I'm paying attention._

"Richard Mayhew, are you paying attention?" asked Door, her serious opal eyes flashing with irritation.

"Yes, yes," said Richard distractedly, picking at the dirt which had already accumulated under his fingernails. "The White City, friendly relations with the Alabaster Court, very important."

"If you'd been listening," Door informed him, "you'd know that for the past half-hour we've been discussing how to patch up relations with the Seven Sisters."

"Weren't you quite convinced that Serpentine wanted you dead?" asked Richard, somewhat confused. "Anyway, I'm not sure how I'm meant to follow a conversation conducted half in Pigeon."

Perched on the table between Door and Richard was a rather large and self-satisfied pigeon. Until recently, the pigeon had been a flamboyant gentleman by the name of the Marquis de Carabas. He had declined to reveal the circumstances that had left him in his current state, and Richard had his suspicions that it was a deliberate attempt to infiltrate the society of birds.

In any case, the pigeon let out an offended trill, as if to say that it was hardly his fault that he was in this position. Door had informed Richard that the Marquis was helping with her endeavours in return for her promise to search for a cure, which didn't fit with what Richard knew of the Marquis' acumen at all; it was more likely that he was here through sheer nosiness, looking for an advantage in case this crazy plan came to fruition.

"It's not the Marquis' fault," replied Door defensively. "Anyway, Pigeon isn't a hard language. Maybe if you paid more attention you'd pick it up."

Richard decided it wasn't worth arguing, and soon found his attention drifting again as Door and the pigeon began arguing about the merits of calling for tribute in favours rather than more traditional goods and services. He was just relaxing in the pleasant warmth of the room when a concluding tone to the discussion made him pay attention once more.

"So," said Door, "did you want to go with the Marquis to negotiate with the rat-speakers, or head over to the Black Friars and tell them what happened to the key?"

"Oh great," said Richard, too tired not to speak his mind. "Either I get to stand around kowtowing to squeaky things and being left out of conversations again, or probably get beaten up by a guy with a stick in order to tell some nice people that not only did I ruin their entire purpose in life, I threw it away on something I didn't even want. Great choice. So, what are you doing, anyway?"

Door suddenly looked small and frail and scared, but at the same time determined and rather defensive.

"I'm going to see Serpentine."

***

"If you crap on my shoulder I swear I'll wring your scrawny neck."

Richard wasn't feeling very diplomatic as he trudged off down the tunnel with that damned pigeon on his shoulder. He'd waited until they were out of Door's earshot to mutter his impassioned but probably unrealistic threat, and the pigeon seemed decidedly unimpressed. The reply was incomprehensible to Richard, but was probably along the lines of "If you can catch me," or possibly just "And your mother too."

Richard gave him the finger (carefully out of pecking range) and carried on splashing through the centimetre or two of water sluggishly trickling down the path before him.

Maybe it was something in his stride, or maybe Door and the Marquis had chosen the route well, but the shadows seemed friendly tonight. A couple of bravos having a fistfight stood to the side and nodded as he passed; someone all in black standing against the wall at a junction waved him past; an old man with a coat made of leaves offered him cooked sparrows on a stick.

He was about to turn down this offer when he noticed pigeon claws digging hard into his shoulder, so he mumbled "How much?"

"Go ahead, my treat," smiled the old man.

Richard gingerly took the stick from him, and eyed it cautiously. The old man was obviously waiting for him to try some.

"It's well fried, just take a bite," urged the old man encouragingly.

Richard looked skeptically at the completely intact birds on the stick, and with an internal shrug, took a bite out of one wing. Much to his surprise, it wasn't much like having a mouthful of feathers, but crispy and delicious.

"You like it, huh?" asked the old man. Richard nodded enthusiastically, hoping this would make his interlocutor move on. From some hidden pocket in his coat of leaves, the old man unrolled an apron of paper, on which he hastily wrote (in impeccable upside-down writing) 'Endorsed by the Greatest Hunter in London Below'. When he was done, he looked nervously at Richard for approval.

Richard kept nodding encouragingly, despite the rising terror.

The old man scuttled off down the passage, grinning broadly.

Maybe it wasn't the route or the attitude. Maybe it was the reputation, the reputation he had unfairly and unexpectedly taken from Hunter over her dying body.

It was a sobering thought to take with him through the ancient and abandoned passages leading to the rat-speakers' domain.

***

_Dear diary: Here I am, back where I started, except this time I'm some sort of celebrity - the Warrior. Oh, and instead of shunning a decent thigh of cat, I'm chowing down on fried sparrow of unknown provenance. But I still can't speak pigeon, let alone rat, and, oh God, I feel guilty about Anaesthesia._

As Richard strode into the room with a confidence he didn't feel, the chatting mass of ratspeakers gradually fell silent and made way. The channel of empty space before him widened, then turned a corner, and the Lord Rat-speaker came into view, caught in the motion of skinning a cat. He threw the meat aside (it was caught ably by an underling) as he turned to greet them, but he had barely opened his mouth to hail Richard when he spotted the pigeon on his shoulder and his face fell. He turned to his cronies for a short whispered dialog as Richard continued his approach. They settled on something, and the Lord Rat-speaker turned back to the new arrivals.

"Ah, Richard-Warrior-Richard. What do you bring us-us?"

Richard had almost opened his mouth to reply when the Marquis began trilling from his shoulder, and for once he wisely remained silent instead of performing his traditional duty of ruining the whole charade by revealing the Marquis' true identity.

The negotiations then proceeded, as Richard had expected, entirely over his head, or more accurately past his left ear, as the ratspeakers conversed with the Marquis in fluent Pigeon. Richard was beginning to feel like everyone in the world knew the language but him. He tried to console himself with the idea that of course the rat-speakers could speak Pigeon, speaking to vermin was what they did, but it didn't really help with his feelings of inadequacy. He listened intently to the conversation for a bit, but the burbling was as incomprehensible as ever. Looking around, he tried to distract himself from the tedium, but the hopeful, curious, hungry faces of the gathered ratspeakers reminded him too painfully of Anaesthesia.

Finally, some kind of conclusion seemed to be reached, and the ratspeakers involved in the discussion began moving off. Richard glanced sideways at the Marquis, who gestured impatiently in the direction of the ratspeakers' motion with his head, so Richard fell in behind them.

Just outside the cavern, the lower ratspeakers peeled off into an honour guard blocking off the side passages, and the Lord Rat-speaker fell to his knees and began to crawl forwards, into a dark tunnel too low to stand in. Richard thought about protesting, but the solemn atmosphere of the other rat-speakers and the quiet closing of ranks behind him didn't make him fond of his chances if he refused what appeared to be a great honour. The self-loathing that he had built up over the rat-speaker girl taken by the night allowed him to swallow his pride and drop to hands and knees, carefully letting the Marquis reposition himself before scrambling after the ratspeaker.

"I don't see why you couldn't do this yourself," he hissed at the pigeon when he was safely in the confining darkness of the tunnel, using his irritation at the Marquis to distract him from the closeness and discomfort and the receding firelight behind him.

As he couldn't answer in a language Richard could understand, the Marquis didn't waste the energy to coo a retort or explanation, although if Richard could have craned his neck to watch (and there had been enough light to see) he might have seen the rather strange spectacle of a pigeon rolling it's eyes.

***

"So the Marquis becomes a bird," said the raven.

"And goes straight to see the Golden," said another.

"We will not welcome him," concludes a third, and they spread their clipped wings in the ancient signal.

From the tower, a sparrow flies.

***

The darkness lifted slightly ahead of them as the Lord High Ratspeaker paused to chitter a question to some unseen creature ahead of them. There was a short sequence of responding squeaks, and then the Lord Rat-speaker hunkered down with his head between his hands. There was a small, delicate sound from ahead, barely perceptible, a pattering of paws on smooth stone. The Marquis burbled something urgent in Richard's ear, but Richard was too busy straining his eyes into the dark ahead (now a fuzzy grey with an obvious shadow where the ratspeaker had paused) to discover what was going on.

The wave of rats breaking over the ratspeaker's shoulders gave Richard just enough time to cry out and, crucially, bury his face in his hands before the silent tide ran onto him. And then there was just terror and confusion and wondering how he had come so far that he was not flailing and screaming and making matters worse, rats caught in his hair and scrambling over his back.

Eventually the tide of rats thinned and died away, and the pigeon cooed inquisitively in Richard's ear.

"I'm fine, you old bastard," muttered Richard, lifting his head and looking anxiously for any signs of further threats. When he'd satisfied himself that the rats were gone for good, he ruefully lifted a hand to attempt the untangling of his hair, without much expectation of success. The ratspeaker was still kowtowing, and the pigeon burbled offendedly in his ear before going back to sulk on his shoulder. Peering suspiciously into the darkness, Richard could see no more activity, and in a few moments the ratspeaker picked up his head and started off down the tunnel again.

Ahead, the light became gradually stronger, and the walls either side began to fall away to reveal rat-sized steps down along a vast half-circle, a rat amphitheatre with Richard and the ratspeaker crawling in through the one human-sized entrance. And in the middle, basking in the reflected radiance from the cat-sized hole leading on into the darkness, was a sleek brown rat.

Awkwardly, the Lord Rat-speaker turned onto his back, and bared his throat.

Richard turned to the Marquis and hissed, "I don't have to do that, do I?"

The pigeon, to Richard's horror, shrugged.

***

_Dear diary: I suppose this is a rare honour, a human in the hidden sanctuary of the rats, and a known thrower of remotes at messenger rats at that. Kind of a shame that I can't speak a word of rat and the pigeon that can appears to be too busy sulking to give me etiquette tips._

The envoy rat made a noise that could be charitably called a squeak, but was undoubtedly a challenge. Richard tried to glance sideways at the pigeon in the hope of a clue, or a response, but the Marquis had retreated further down his back and was keeping his silence.

"Uh... hello?" ventured Richard timidly. The Lord Rat-speaker scuttled out of the way and hunkered down around the side of the rat, who repeated the challenge.

Richard looked at the ground, looked at the rat, looked at the ground again, and decided.

"Look," he began, staring the rat directly in the eye as best he could, "I'm the Warrior. I killed the Beast. I may have lost the spear, but I've had quite enough crawling down here and I'm not going to roll over for you, or whoever you represent."

He wasn't entirely sure where he'd found the words, and he was more than half expecting an avalanche of ratty death from behind, but to his great relief the rat made a satisfied sort of noise and refocused its attention on his shoulder, where the Marquis finally started burbling. After a moment's discussion, the pigeon hopped down off his shoulder and followed the brown rat deeper into the glowing cave.

It felt like they were huddling for hours in the rat amphitheatre, waiting for the negotiations to end. Richard awkwardly shuffled into a sitting position and gazed around at all the rat-sized entrances, wondering where they all went. Occasional phrases of rat drifted out of the cavern ahead. He wished he had some way of picking up just a few words here and there, and in between trying to divine the progress of the argument (both sides sounded impassioned, but polite), he worried about Door.

Eventually there was some kind of conclusion, and the Marquis returned unharmed, climbed onto Richard's shoulder, and imperiously jerked his head in the direction of the way they had come.

***

In the darkness beneath the world, the summoned horde returned to hear the Golden's verdict.

A single squeak was all the information the envoy needed to impart.

The horde dispersed, squeaking and chittering as they discussed the consequences of the decision.

The envoy headed away himself, on a special mission personally given him based on his report.

***

Of all the things that Richard had thought he might find at the end of the tunnel, the sudden flurry of motion he was greeted with was not one he had looked forwards to. The honour guard had glass-tipped spears - shards of bottles embedded in the end of broom-handles and tied on with cat-gut - and as he stepped over their strike *here* and ducked into their reach *there* and brought up Hunter's knife like *this*, he wondered vaguely why he wasn't dead, and in a further moment he found his feet and started running.

After the initial panic finally wore off, half a mile down the yellow stone tunnel, he became acutely aware of the loss of a certain pigeon.

He had plenty of justification afterwards about why he turned around and started jogging back towards the rat-speakers. He didn't know the area. He could have blundered into danger without even recognising it. He wasn't entirely sure of where they were meant to be meeting Door. But he thought of all those reasons while he was already underway.

The honour-guard were standing just inside the cavern when he returned to the spot he had fled from, facing away from him. He skidded to a halt in a surprisingly quiet fashion, and overheard a scrap of conversation.

"...sacred, like rats?"

"Pfft. S-s-save a bit of wing for me."

He wasn't quite sure what happened next. There was a spear involved, which he'd presumably wrested from the hands of one of the honour guard, and lots of running and screaming, almost all of which was done by other people, and quite a bit of blood, worryingly large quantities of which were actually his.

When he came round, he was sitting in the middle of a deserted cavern, clutching a spear and wondering dazedly how this had come to pass. As he was still trying to get his bearings, a pigeon which he was coming to recognise waddled over to him and made a slightly disapproving but generally quite impressed noise. It was at about this point that his injuries caught up with him, and after considering briefly the option of heroically struggling to remain conscious, he gently subsided into blissful unawareness.

Pigeons have a large number of synonyms for the word "Shit", and several of them were employed in the next few moments.

***

"Wake up."

It was Door's voice, which probably meant that Door was still alive, or, he guessed, that someone was a skilled mimic of voices. Richard had constructed several other hypotheses, like the one where he had travelled back in time to before Door's inevitable messy death at the hands of Serpentine's bodyguards, and the one where his memories of Door's voice had been carefully edited, before he got around to thinking it might be a good idea to reply.

"What if I don't want to?" he asked, cautiously opening one eye. It would have been both eyes, but the other one appeared to be swollen shut.

"Then I guess we'll just have to stake you out and leave you for the birds," she said. As always, it was difficult to tell whether she was being serious or not.

"All right, all right, I'm awake," he replied, attempting to turn his head towards the source of the voice. Looked like Door, too. Another thought occurred to him. "How's the Marquis?"

"He was fine," said Door. "Then he headed out to see Old Bailey over some favour or other - I didn't think he ever owed anyone a favour - and then there was a blackbird looking for him and I dragged you back here, which was just as well because the entrance we came through is now besieged by rooks."

"So he's in trouble again?" asked Richard. He attempted to surge upright in order to look ready for action, but his sorely abused musculature was having none of it and he managed little but a twitch.

"No, he never was in trouble; just lying low while the fuss died down over the rat-speakers being ordered to attack you and a sparrow getting caught in the crossfire."

"Ordered?" asked Richard.

"Apparently the Golden was testing your right to some claim or other," replied Door, looking impressed but a little scared. Richard supposed this was reasonable. He was more than a little worried himself about his new-found talents.

"How was Serpentine?" he asked, in a terminally misguided attempt to lighten the mood.

"Dead," replied Door, shortly. "The remnants of her domain were almost pathetically grateful to swear fealty, even to a fallen House like the Arch. Seems like no-one else will have them. I don't wonder why: Serpentine didn't make many friends."

"Dead?" asked Richard, taken aback. "How?"

Door shrugged. "Old age. The breaking of dreams. Fulfillment of obligations. At the end, I think there was something of a duel, and her sisters came to eat her. These things happen."

"What are we going to do about the Marquis?"

"Watch. Wait. Hope. What else can we do? Neither of us have wings, and he's gone to the society of birds."

Richard thought for a moment, and could feel the question sneaking up treacherously in the logic of his Above-trained mind.

"Do they take butterflies?" he asked.

Door looked at him. "Do you know something I don't?" she asked.

"No. Just wondering."

"Look. Come on." She helped Richard to a sitting position and together they watched the 'windows' for any sign of a pigeon returning home.

***

_Dear Diary: It looks like reputation down here comes with more benefits than people being polite. If you can call what happened a benefit. Or maybe it was something mystical about the Beast's blood, or Hunter's knife. But I don't have any of Door's fast healing mojo, I don't have wings, and despite my new-found knack for killing people, I've never felt so helpless. They've found half the doors and the ones they've found are black with rooks and crows and little blackbirds, and I don't know where the Marquis is._

It was a shamefully long time before either of them thought of sending a message to the Marquis by animal messenger.

"But I just... scattered... a bunch of rat-speakers," said Richard, carefully avoiding the word "slaughtered" which had first come to mind. "And it looks like the birds are none too friendly."

"You think the rats will care? It sounds like you did right by them," retorted Door.

"Anyway, what if the birds get it?" cautioned Richard. "Even if we can work out how to tell the Marquis which entrances are free without giving away where they are, it'll tell them they haven't got all the entrances covered yet."

"Rats are good messengers," countered Door. "They'll eat the message rather than let it fall into the wrong hands."

It took a moment for Richard to think up a new counter-argument. "If we can't go out for fear of letting the birds in with us, how are we going to get a rat?" he asked.

"Ingress kept a nest in the garden," replied Door, looking at the garden picture, her eyes misting over slightly with memories. "They're not really part of the society of the Golden, but they can take a message to the real messenger rats." She blinked a few times, as if there was something in her eye. "You wait here and watch the windows," she advised, before stepping towards the picture, hand held out in front of her, and in a slightly uncomfortable moment twisting away into her destination.

Richard watched the windows, and sure enough, a rather bedraggled pideon dragged himself to a window and pecked morosely at the blank wall on the other side. Richard leapt to his feet, ignoring his body's protests, but Door wasn't back and there was no obvious way to activate the portal. He ran to the garden picture and yelled "Door! Door! Come back! He's here!", and when that didn't work, before he really knew what he was doing, his fist had hit the picture, which swung crazily on its chains. For a moment he looked rather astonished at his hand, surprised at his sudden violence of action, and then he turned his head just in time to watch the pigeon being dragged off by a rook on each wing, scrabbling and fighting all the way.

"Door!" he called again.

"What?" asked Door, as she stepped out of the garden, holding a small brown rat.

"They got him! They got him!" repeated Richard, staring crazily at the window he'd seen the pigeon in. "Let me out!" he demanded, scrabbling ineffectually at the window.

"Richard. This isn't you. Stop it. You're scaring me," she said, not moving.

Richard subsided a little. "We have to do something," he offered helplessly.

"That's better," she replied. "Let's go."

She let the rat run up her arm as she held out the other towards the 'window', and twisted.

***

The Marquis' struggling hadn't been entirely in vain (and Richard suspected that he'd optimised for the result he got, rather than it being a genuine attempt to get away). The scratches and dropped feathers made a trail even Richard could follow. They ran down the path, hoping they would be faster than the struggling birds. The trail led up a ladder to a manhole cover. Door didn't hesitate. She threw open the lid with the lightest application of her powers, almost got run over by a taxi, and was waiting on the pavement while Richard painfully dragged himself out.

"Now what?" she said. There was no more trail of feathers; one flurry recently tipped off the cover suggested that the trail went straight up into the sky. And people were starting to react to the injured Richard, giving him odd looks and a wide berth; one particularly conscientious passer-by had pulled out their mobile phone.

"Where did the Marquis get his wings?" asked Richard, oblivious to the activity he was inspiring.

"No," said Door, watching the crowd anxiously, but with growing interest. "It's too dangerous."

"Today, you went to see Serpentine. I mouthed off to the Golden. What's too dangerous?"

"The White City," replied Door.

***

Even with the Earl's respect for Door and Richard both, and careful avoidance of any mention of the purpose of their journey, the Court refused to take them as far as the White City, but deposited them a couple of stops down. There were more confused looks as Richard departed the apparently empty tube train and headed straight to the No Entry Without Authorization door on the platform, and one rather bold cleaner attempted to chase him out before catching his eye and falling back muttering something about calling the police. Before she could make good on her promise, the cleaning supplies gave way to a lost street, gaslamp-lit and uneven.

As the buildings increased in grandeur and the cobbles gave way to tiled marble underfoot, Richard became increasingly aware of how filthy and wretched he looked; trousers and sleeves soaked to knee and elbow by the crawl, the back of his jacket plucked by wave upon wave of ants, and the whole ensemble slashed and bloodstained from the fight with the ratspeakers. It didn't help that the gleaming albino standing guard on the other side of the golden gate inlaid with pearls was not only immaculately groomed but also completely spotless (and hairless) across their well-toned bare chest and down their long muscular arms.

Door and Richard straggled up to the gate, where the albino looked down his nose at them.

"We can make you clean," he offered, and for a moment Richard felt a yearning, a drag on his soul, to be truly clean, inside and out, clean and pure and new...

"The Lady Door and Richard the Warrior seek an audience with the Alabaster Court," said Door smoothly, and the spell on Richard broke.

"You may enter," said the albino distastefully, "but this servant makes no guarantees about the manner or state in which you may leave."

He opened the golden gate with the lightest of touches, and Door strode confidently through; Richard followed more gingerly, not only because of his aches and pains, but also because the floor was polished marble smooth as glass.

Door seemed to know exactly where she was going, and in the few glimpses he dared take of the surroundings (as opposed to his feet), Richard divined much of the order of the city.

Guarding doors or carrying things were the pink-eyed albinos, their slightly straw-coloured hair worn down to their shoulders, a pure white loincloth and from time to time a halter covering their modesty and highlighting the slight pink flush to their skin. Then there was the blue-eyed caste, their lily-white hair cut in a short and practical style, long white robes with normal sleeves concealing most of their slightly off-white skin, clutching transparent folders of papers with jet-black writing on flawless white in no language he could recognise. And once or twice he saw a truly white figure, face and hair blending seamlessly into pure talc-white robes, with just the slightest hint of blue around the iris, escorted by three albinos each, one on each side with ivory-tipped, white-painted spear at the ready and one behind to hold the train of the robe. All were silent; the footfalls and breathing of Richard and Door were the loudest sounds on the street. Behind them, an albino swept the marble clear of the signs of their passing.

Finally, Door turned towards a building no more ostentatious than any other, ascended the white marble steps and knocked at the white-painted door with the simple golden door-knocker, once.

The door was opened by an albino. The pair of travellers were ushered forwards by one of the blue-eyed into the dock of a court. The stands were inhabited by the pure white people, who Richard surmised were the Alabaster Court, and in the judge's seat was a man whose eyes were so white they glowed with an unearthly radiance, and in which no outline of an iris, no pupil could be discerned.

Before Richard could say anything, Door stepped up to the podium and spoke.

"Here he is. What you asked for."

"Excellent," said the white-eyed man. He favoured Richard with a benevolent smile. "A fine specimen indeed. We shall enjoy him."

Richard was still reeling with confusion as two albinos stepped forwards and took his arms.

"No!" he cried, the touch bringing him to his senses. "Door! Tell me you didn't..."

But Door just looked at him sadly, with pity more than remorse. _All fire burns, little baby. You'll learn._

As he was dragged away into the light, struggling futilely against the iron grip on his arms, betrayed by the smooth floor, he saw Door turn back to the man and say, "Well?"

"You have my fealty," he replied, "and the freedom of the White City for you and your line, so long as it shall endure."

***

One second he is Richard Mayhew, The Warrior, The Greatest Hunter in London Below: they have taken his clothes and dressed him in a white loincloth, but the wounds and the ingrained dirt and the stubborn personality remain. The next he is a perfectly sculpted albino, slightly straw-coloured hair down to his shoulders. But he's not done fighting yet, and the next second he is back to himself again.

_Dear Diary: They want to make me (switch) clean (switch), to make me (switch) pure (switch), to make me (switch) beautiful (switch). The (switch) White (switch) City. I thought she cared. (switch) No-one cares. (switch) I thought she would help. (switch) No-one wants him. (switch) But I can't give up. (switch) Give up hope. (switch) Even though there's no-one out there. (switch) No-one cares. (switch) No-one will miss me (switch) no-one will come (switch) for this pathetic excuse (switch) the Warrior of London (switch) no-one will feel obliged (switch) obligations fulfilled (switch) as I'm of no imaginable use (switch) dreams broken (switch) now I've been left here to rot (switch) old age (switch) in some new and shapeless form..._

He met the charge of the albino with perfect reflexes, snatching up the white spear and beating the other back until, separated from his weapon, the assailant surrendered, but as he held the spear to the albino's throat the change came over him again. This time he was not ready for it, and the new form stabilised, a new albino citizen of the White City.

***

Time does not pass in the White City as it does in other places. One can serve a thousand years as a menial, ten thousand as a bureaucrat, in but a handful of days.

The albino who was once Richard served little time as a menial; it was judged that long periods without direct supervision could lead to the Warrior reasserting himself. His apprenticeship, then, was mostly served in the personal guard of one member or another of the Court itself, their radiance reinforcing the layer of purity deposited by the duel in the room of light. He served well through the invasion of the Green Men, and was duly posted on to Whitechapel, as hair and skin bleached and blue leaked into his irises.

And in Whitechapel a pigeon landed on his left shoulder and looked into his eyes, and in that moment he remembered, and in remembering came a terrible rage. He slew his fellow guardsmen and the pure white Chaplain, a sudden fury of white spears and shockingly red blood as each reverted to their true forms upon their death.

In the midst of the fight, he reflected for a moment on the chaplain's dead, staring, opal eyes. For all that she was not Door, the likeness was uncanny.

Then he ran.

***

In the dead end of a lost alleyway, walls of brick on three sides, stone above and half-uprooted cobbles choked with mud below, a slightly off-white figure in muddied robes slumps in a corner, eyes closed, cradling a pigeon.

"I sent the Green Men," said the pigeon, "but I couldn't penetrate the city myself. An ancient agreement between them and the Parliament of Birds."

"I learnt pigeon ," murmured the white man, his eyes still closed. "The chaplain took messages that way."

"I failed," said the pigeon. "Old Bailey called in his favour, and I couldn't fulfill it."

"I'm the Warrior," said the man. "I'm the Greatest Hunter in London Below. I can kill people. But I'm still as helpless as a newborn child."

"Don't you understand?" asked the pigeon. "I'm ruined. I'm nothing. The Marquis de Carabas can't keep his word. I'm a liar, a charlatan, a perjurer, and I'm not even much good at being a pigeon. I used up my last favour escaping the Ravenscourt. I'm a dead man, Richard. I'm not even a man any more."

"I'm pretty sure I just killed Ingress, too."

"I'd try and pretend you owe me, but I'm not sure you've got anything to owe."

Richard opened his eyes. "You know your way around. I can kill people. We're not done yet."

"Look, Richard. Door betrayed you. I'm all washed out. You can kill people, sure, but you feel bad about it afterwards."

"If you're trying to talk me into giving up..."

"No. We've got to re-invent ourselves."

***

In the temple of the Black Friars hangs a single silver key. It's the key to Heaven. It's the key to reality.

In recent history, it has been turned twice.

Once, Brother Mayhew used it to escape London Below. But he renounced that and returned.

Once, Brother de Carabas used it to reinvent himself once again, and along with him the white man that he had rescued for some reason he still doesn't quite understand.

These days, pilgrims rarely make it beyond the first challenge. Brother Mayhew may be better with a spear, but using a staff he doesn't have to kill anybody.

Brother de Carabas made up a new riddle. The answer is "Pigeon".

Door's new domain has gone from strength to strength in the time Richard spent outside of time. On discovering the circumstances of Ingress' death and recovering her remains, she brought an army to the door of the temple. She knew the lore. Ingress hadn't hidden her life anywhere. She had entered the White City as a child and she had died pure. The only way to get her back was to use the silver key.

Brother Mayhew stood on the bridge and watched the army surround the temple. He stood on the bridge and watched them prepare their pontoons and siege weapons and release their birds and their rats. There was no way into the temple except to walk across the bridge. It was an immutable feature of the universe. Little by little, the attackers learnt this. Birds flying over dropped suddenly dead, of perfectly natural causes. Makeshift bridges broke in the middle of the moat. Those attempting to jump across didn't quite make it, whatever their usual talents. Non-living ammunition from siege engines worked fine, but rolled harmlessly down the side of the temple. There were no secret tunnels, no hidden entrances. Just the bridge where Brother Mayhew stood.

The siege settled in, certain that the bridge's defender would have to eat or sleep or otherwise become distracted at some point. But when the Brother de Carabas had altered reality, he had not done half a job. Someone more powerful than he had set the form of the challenges, but as powerful as they had been, they had not been sufficiently clever to prevent the bending of the rules here and there. So Brother Mayhew stood on the bridge, in such a manner as to imply he would be happy and comfortable standing ready there for an eternity, certainly far past the lifespan of the white soldiers away from their city, the ratspeaker spearmen, the blackbird scouts, the cave-painting skirmishers, and, if not all of Door's varied army, at least the major part.

Knowing who Brother Mayhew had been, Door came forwards, careful not to get too close, to make her appeal.

"I don't expect you to like me, and I don't expect you to trust me. But look. Here is Ingress."

Four ragged figures emerged from the front line, holding between them a stretcher on which the remains of Ingress were remarkably well-preserved.

"Don't give me the key," continued Door. "Don't trust me. But take Ingress and heal her. I know the key can do that." She looked like she was about to break down into tears. "I know the key is the only thing that can do that."

Brother Mayhew shook his head. "You know it doesn't work like that. You know the Black Friars cannot use the key themselves."

"Then choose a third party," said Door, frustrated. "Anyone, so long as they will bring Ingress back."

"You don't understand, Door," said Brother Mayhew, smiling sadly, with pity more than remorse. "Thanks to you, I don't trust anyone. Not any more."

Door retreated to converse with her generals, and there followed an assault on the bridge, in which many were thrown into the moat (only one could successfully approach at a time) and many were slain (after all, there was no shortage of more lethal weaponry to take from the fallen). But Brother Mayhew was not only the Warrior, the Greatest Hunter in London Below, but now he had been trained as a guardsman in the White City and perfected by the turning of the key, and his defence held.

Much later in the day, Door called off the offensive and approached Brother Mayhew alone.

"Are you going to kill me?" she asked.

"If it is only you," said Brother Mayhew, "I can knock you out and bear you safely back across the bridge to your side before you wake."

"And if I came with my army?"

"Then I would kill you as a mercy, lest the bridge tip you into the moat as the next challenger approaches."

"What did you do with the Richard I knew?" she asked, with her best little-girl-lost face, wide opal eyes shining with fear and hope. But he had been taught well by the Marquis, and could see the cynical manipulation just under the surface.

"When the temple isn't under siege," he said, "sometimes we let him out." He favours her with a pitying look. "He wasn't much of a survivor anyway."

"Is that all you care about? Survival?"

Brother Mayhew suddenly looked much more serious than his previous taunting look, his gaze more intense.

"If it was," he said, "I would never have left the White City."

***

_Dear Diary: It's not a bad place, the Temple of the Black Friars. We're self-sufficient- even grow our own tea - and most of the original Friars stayed on, even after the Marquis took the key and rewrote the rules. I have to stand on the bridge if we're expecting powerful visitors. He doesn't trust the key's power alone to hold - we think that sometimes it wants to be won. But apart from that, I suppose we have our happily ever after._

_But - he's changed. He changed himself when he used that key. He must have been lower than I thought. The old Marquis, the larger-than-life, charismatic Marquis de Carabas, the man I, oh God, I still can't say it - he wouldn't have stayed here. He might have laid low for a while, but he'd be off again by now, cheating and stealing and reinventing himself._

_I have to save him._

_I have to save him from himself._

_Sometimes there is nothing you can do._

***

In the dead of night he left he Marquis sleeping and set out across the bridge, wearing scruffy modern clothes and scrappy leather armour retrieved from long-ago pilgrims. He pushed the hapless friar silently off the bridge as they turned to greet him, and they were swallowed by the moat before they could make a sound, as if it was in collusion.

As he stepped off the bridge, he felt something leave him, something of the strength and reflexes he had been granted, and looking down at his hands, he noted that they were white - not the albino shade of the White City, but the conventional dirty pink. Also, there were bells ringing in the temple. The Marquis had obviously tied the powers he'd been granted to his status as a Black Friar, which by leaving the temple he had renounced.

But he was still the Warrior, and he ran.

***

The key had changed the Marquis, so it stood to reason that only the key could return him, but Richard knew that Brother de Carabas would not allow the trials to take their course if he was still obviously Richard Mayhew; he wasn't sure whether the spurned Brother de Carabas would imprison or kill him, but neither eventuality would give Richard access to the key. His first thought was the White City, but as a pigeon the Marquis had seen through that disguise; as a man it would stand no chance against him.

Richard was not a leader, nor an explorer, and so he did not attempt to discover how to achieve the disguise he wanted for himself. Instead, he asked the first denizen of the Underside that he met (a kindly old lady knitting in a rocking chair, in an alcove off a disused Victorian sewer) where he might go to seek audience with the Lady Door.

"Up to the painting of the ox, three times widdershins, and jump through the floor," she said, in a brisk but helpful tone. With every word her flesh became greyer until at the last it turned to dust and crumbled to the ground, her intact skeleton still knitting.

Richard knew better by now than to question such directions. At the next junction was a fairly recent cave painting of a large brown beast of burden, and he turned around (still somewhat self-consciously) three times anti-clockwise, then jumped on the spot, hard, as if to drive through the floor.

Peals of childish laughter rang out from the shadows as half a dozen small children, armed variously with paintbrushes, palettes and switchblades, emerged from the shadows on the two unexplored arms of the T-junction, three either side of him.

"We'll take you to her," said the eldest, a girl of about ten, a brush in one hand and a spiked knuckle-duster on the other.

***

They sat either side of the same table that had once held a pigeon; now it held snowdrifts of paper overlaying what could only be an attempt at a map of London Below. This was obviously the seat of a powerful government. But Door looked no older, although she did look rather more harassed.

"Well?" she asked.

"I'll bring her back," he said, "if I can get in. But he could tell me from amongst the guardsmen of the White City, so it's not trivial to disguise me."

"And what do you get?" she asked.

"When we fled into the temple," explained Richard, "the Marquis changed himself more deeply than he changed me. His personality - his sense of adventure - the core of his being..."

"Richard," said Door, "I want to help you. I want to give you what you want. But I don't think you've thought this through."

"Why do you care?" asked Richard. "You get what you want. I get what I ask for. It sounds like an equitable deal."

"Maybe I'm not as heartless as you give me credit for," replied Door. "He chose to change himself, Richard. He chose this path. Maybe he's happier like this."

"I made a choice once," said Richard, "and I was glad for the chance to change my mind."

"Not everyone is like you, Richard," said Door.

"What it is that you really want?" asked Richard. "What are you afraid of?"

Door looked at him, and the fire in her eyes was no longer the flames of wounded innocence, but the fire of fanatic devotion to a cause.

"I want to make this place real. I want a map of every under-city, a Market that gathers the world together, a movement that will understand and classify and develop magic as if it were technology, myth as if it were history, emotion as if it were rational thought."

"So you don't want Ingress any more."

"She's in heaven. Why should I disturb her?"

"And you think I shouldn't disturb the Marquis either?"

"You left him. I wouldn't be surprised if he'd hung himself from a tower already."

"What?" Richard surged to his feet, as if to leave, but remembered there was no way out of the House Without Doors without Door's consent, and she was showing no signs of movement.

"Sit down, Richard," she said. He sat. "He didn't change for his own benefit, you know. He changed for you. He knew it was the only way he could stay with you. Now you've left, well, he didn't have a lot left when he broke his word to Old Bailey, and he left behind those parts of himself who could head out and find you."

"So you won't help me?"

"I didn't say that," replied Door. "You see, I thought I needed the key. But you've already used the key. I saw it when we were Above, that day we were chasing the pigeon to the Parliament of Birds, when we crossed the station to the White City. You're part of both places now. Where you go, reality follows. You're all the key I need."

"No," said Richard. "I won't help you. You're insane."

"Perhaps," allowed Door. "But I can wait. I have the freedom of the White City. The Marquis made you immortal. I doubt he'd take that away when you left. Eventually you'll come around."

Richard rested his arms on the table, and thought. Then he looked up at Door once again.

"Bring me the Marquis. Alive and whole and right again. Then we'll talk."

"No sooner said than done. Which room would you like to wait in?" asked Door.

"Here will do fine," replied Richard.

***

In the House Without Doors, he sits waiting. It has been a long time, but he is patient (now he is patient: in times past he has paced grooves in the carpet, shredded the curtains, cried to the walls and wept in a ball on the floor, but all that was done many years ago). He does not hunger or thirst or age or sleep.

He feels the breeze from behind, the air currents changing, but does not move. Sometimes she comes through here, to retrieve dusty paperwork, or to escort others through the House.

A familiar pair of hands descend on his shoulders.

"Miss me?" asks the Marquis de Carabas, and the sparkle in his voice tells Richard all he needs to know.

Tomorrow, he will help an insane autocrat build her empire. Some day, the Marquis will tire of him and move on. But today, Richard knows that he has not deprived the world of the Marquis, and that is enough for him.

 


End file.
